The Voynich Ninja

(18-03-2019, 11:41 AM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I must say that my knowledge of Greek, let alone the Judaeo-Greek, is far less than even that of English, so can you please clarify if something can be picked out this  word list that would suit the different contexts in which otol is mentioned?

Just for one example to begin with: It could be a rather shorthand way to write the Greek word "oikos", meaning "house". Of course in this case the "i" in the "oi" diphthong would not be indicated in the word. But when a lot of the words look the same, we can imagine that there was probably a lot of abbreviation going on in the text.

Here are some of the standard meanings for the Greek word "oikos":

"house or dwelling place"
"room, chamber"
"meeting house, hall; monument"
"birdcage"
"(astrology) domicile of a planet"
"estate, inheritance"
"reigning house or family"

Source: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 

If we extend it to the related Greek adjective form "oikeios" (again, it would be very abbreviated if it is [otol]),
then we also get the following standard meanings:

"in the house, at home"
"of the house, domestic"
"of the same household; familial, related"
"friendly"
"belonging to one's house or family"
"belonging to oneself, personal, private"
"proper, fitting, suitable"
"belonging to"
"(astrology) domiciliary"
"(Stoicism) endeared by nature"

Source: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Well, even with the many assumptions that you made in terms of spelling, you can see that this fails the test, unless in Greek we have some celestial body or constellation called "birdcage" or plant called "estate", etc. That's the problem for the theory of Voynich labels as plain designators.

---

This has been attempted by linguists before, most notably by late Prof. Stephen Bax, and they have not been very successful with the labels.

(18-03-2019, 01:25 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well, even with the many assumptions that you made in terms of spelling, you can see that this fails the test, unless in Greek we have some celestial body or constellation called "birdcage" or plant called "estate", etc. That's the problem for the theory of Voynich labels  as plain designators.

---

This has been attempted by linguists before, most notably by late Prof. Stephen Bax, and they have not been very successful with the labels.

Yes, but so far I have only covered "oikos" and "oikeios". 

According to my Judaeo-Greek theory, a form such as [otol] could also have represented "okos", "okose", "ogos", "ogose", "okas", "okase", "ogas", "ogase", "okaus", "okause", "ogaus", "ogause", "akas", "akase", "agas", "agase", "akos", "akose", "agos", "agose", "akaus", "akause", "agaus", "agause", "aukos", "aukose", "augos", "augose", "aukas", "aukase", "augas", "augase", "aukaus", "aukause", "augaus", "augause", and in fact many more variants of all of these forms, with unwritten diphthongs, with the first vowel separate from the root, with other final vowels, etc.

Or alternatively, [l] could be "n", and we would have to go through the whole list word by word with "n" instead of "s".

It will take at least many months if not years to research all the possible meanings, just for this one word [otol].

That's what I'm suggesting to circumvent - namely, to jump from the glyph level directly to the vord level. There can be myriads of mappings of natural languages to Voynichese - Latin, Greek, proto-Ukrainian, Nahuatl etc. etc. In contrast to that, the vord is unambigous, with two reservations only - first, transcription reliability, and, second, inflexions.

If we see "otol", then is it "otol" everywhere. We don't care if it is Greek or Nahuatl. We only don't know if, say, "otolchedy" is related to "otol" or unrelated. This presents additional complexity, but, at the same time, "otolchedy" is always "otolchedy" as well.

(18-03-2019, 12:24 AM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.By the way, about the "verb test". What about beginnings of paragraphs? E.g. in Russian it is not very common to have a verb starting a sentence in a narrative, unless in poetic or colloquial, and also unless the sentence is not interrogative or imperative. Although there are cornercases. In English, same thing, I think - unless to express subjunctive (like "Were I a boy,..."), a verb is not common in the beginning of a sentence, is it? What about other languages?

Celtic and Semitic languages are VSO (except for Modern Hebrew, which is SVO).

Good, I then can imagine a simple test. Check all vords that are beginning paragraphs, and if there is anything common in them (yes, there is, at least most of them begin with gallows). If they are unique beyond statistical expectation, then they are most likely nouns (and the language is SVO). If they are unique below the expectation, then they are most likely verbs or adjectives.

The idea is that in the book such as this, there will be more unique nouns than unique verbs or unique adjectives.

What do you think?

I spent two years creating a concordance of the locations/patterns of every vord in the VMS. It's more than 1100 pages. I was looking for patterns, any kind of pattern, but what I expected to see IF it was linguistic, just didn't seem to be there, at least not on the vord level.

So... then I tried looking at vord-pairs and other kinds of relationships because I became very skeptical that a vord was a word.

(18-03-2019, 03:00 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.That's what I'm suggesting to circumvent - namely, to jump from the glyph level directly to the vord level. There can be myriads of mappings of natural languages to Voynichese - Latin, Greek, proto-Ukrainian, Nahuatl etc. etc. In contrast to that, the vord is unambigous, with two reservations only - first, transcription reliability, and, second, inflexions.

If we see "otol", then is it "otol" everywhere. We don't care if it is Greek or Nahuatl. We only don't know if, say, "otolchedy" is related to "otol" or unrelated. This presents additional complexity, but, at the same time, "otolchedy" is always "otolchedy" as well.

I am suggesting that "otol" can represent numerous different words, all within the same ms text. It could represent "oikos" on one page, "akase" on another page, "augos" on another page, and so on, and so on. 

In Judaeo-Greek, for example, it would have been the vowel diacritic dots that would have distinguished most of these words from one another. 
But I am suggesting that in this ms text, those vowel diacritic dots were not written. 

And yes, it was and is actually common for people to write Hebrew and other Semitic scripts without the vowel diacritic dots, especially in cursive handwritten writing. You might think, then how can people ever tell the words apart? Answer: Because people who are very familiar with the language and the script, largely know what word to expect to occur in a given place anyway. 

For example, let's say for argument's sake that "akase" is the Judaeo-Greek plant name. The fluent reader of Judaeo-Greek simply knew in that context that "otol" has to be "akase", and not "oikos" or "augos", because "akase" is the only one of those words that makes sense as a plant name. 

Likewise, in another context, such as the star name, the fluent Judaeo-Greek reader knew that "otol" had to be "augos" -- an actual Greek word meaning "morning light, dawn", by the way -- and not "akase" or "oikos", because "augos" is the only one of those words that makes sense as a star name.

In a third context, related to one of the 12 astrological divisions, the fluent Judaeo-Greek reader knew that "otol" had to be "oikos", and not "akase" or "augos", because "house" makes perfect sense in this astrological context, and the other two words don't make sense.

By such mental methods, fluent readers of Semitic scripts have an amazing ability to figure out the meanings of seemingly highly ambiguous word forms, simply from the context and from their own deep knowledge and experience with the script and the language. Experienced readers of Arabic say that they can read Arabic without the dots marked, even though in Arabic the dots distinguish between different consonants, not just different vowels!

You would be amazed how people have learned to be able to read the most defective scripts you could ever imagine. Book Pahlavi is a famous example. The idea that a single form like "otol" could refer to several or even a dozen or more different words in the same script and in the same text, would not be surprising at all to a reader of Book Pahlavi.

Quote:I am suggesting that "otol" can represent numerous different words, all within the same ms text. It could represent "oikos" on one page, "akase" on another page, "augos" on another page, and so on, and so on.

If we add this, i.e. different spelling, to different meanings (i.e. homonyms), then of course it becomes significantly more complicated, and more degrees of freedom for the interpreter do arise. But what it left is to demonstrate that in action, on a more or less extensive fragment of text and respecting grammar. I do not think anyone has yet been successful in that.

Quote:Because people who are very familiar with the language and the script, largely know what word to expect to occur in a given place anyway.

Can we assert that the author was very familiar with the script? I do not see solid grounds for that. On the contrary, the last line of f116v, where only part of it is in Voynichese, suggests that either the author was not very comfortable with the script or that the expressive power of the script was very limited (e.g. not suitable for German language or not suitable to convey meaning of "so", "nim", "gas" and "mich").

Quote:what I expected to see IF it was linguistic, just didn't seem to be there, at least not on the vord level.

If a writing conveys meaningful message, then it simply must be linguistic. Just it can be "oddly linguistic". Consider, for example, a dictionary. Is it linguistic? Yes, it is. Does it resemble something like the Bible or the "Origin of Species"? No, it does not. It is common to approach the VMS as if it were a systematic narrative, and to expect relative things from it, but what grounds are there for such an approach? Actually, not very solid ones.

(18-03-2019, 05:58 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Quote:I am suggesting that "otol" can represent numerous different words, all within the same ms text. It could represent "oikos" on one page, "akase" on another page, "augos" on another page, and so on, and so on.

If we add this, i.e. different spelling, to different meanings (i.e. homonyms), then of course it becomes significantly more complicated, and more degrees of freedom for the interpreter do arise. But what it left is to demonstrate that in action, on a more or less extensive fragment of text and respecting grammar. I do not think anyone has yet been successful in that.

Quote:Because people who are very familiar with the language and the script, largely know what word to expect to occur in a given place anyway.

Can we assert that the author was very familiar with the script? I do not see solid grounds for that. On the contrary, the last line of f116v, where only part of it is in Voynichese, suggests that either the author was not very comfortable with the script or that the expressive power of the script was very limited (e.g. not suitable for German language or not suitable to convey meaning of "so", "nim", "gas" and "mich").

Quote:what I expected to see IF it was linguistic, just didn't seem to be there, at least not on the vord level.

If a writing conveys meaningful message, then it simply must be linguistic. Just it can be "oddly linguistic". Consider, for example, a dictionary. Is it linguistic? Yes, it is. Does it resemble something like the Bible or the "Origin of Species"? No, it does not. It is common to approach the VMS as if it were a systematic narrative, and to expect relative things from it, but what grounds are there for such an approach? Actually, not very solid ones.

1) Yes, I agree it must be demonstrated in action, on a more or less extensive fragment of text and respecting grammar. I am working on that in the "Greek You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 1" thread. But it is admittedly a slow process.

2) My understanding is that handwriting experts have concluded that the author wrote the script as if he had mastered it. The "ductus" is smooth, as they say: the script flows smoothly from letter to letter. Whereas an author less familiar with the script would be expected to have written with more stops and starts, etc. As for You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , that is only a tiny fragment of a few lines on the top of the last page. Can we even be sure You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was written by the same person or people who wrote the rest of the ms? I would be hesitant to base any general conclusions on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .

3) Well, we don't know if the Voynich ms conveys any meaningful message. The author could have just been using the characters as artistic decorations, essentially. I don't like this theory, and it doesn't make a lot of sense, especially for sections of the ms such as the final "recipes" section, which does not look nearly as "artistic" as the text in the plants section, for example. But the "artistic decoration" / meaningless text hypothesis is still a very real possibility that we have to keep in mind.